In all, one in every nine public school students in Southwest Michigan is not enrolled in the school district in which they live, according to an MLive/Kalamazoo Gazette analysis of 2011-12 enrollment data. Of those 9,000 students, about 1,200 attend charter schools and the remainder attend a regular public school as an out-of-district student.

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Sixteen years after Michigan implemented Schools of Choice, the law that greatly loosened restrictions on where students can enroll, has had a profound impact on regional enrollment patterns, creating winners and losers among schools as parents vote with their feet. Recently released data from the Michigan Department of Education illustrates those patterns in Southwest Michigan.

The competition for students has heated up in recent years, as cash-strapped districts increasingly use the Schools of Choice law to boost revenues via enrollment increases.

"It really is a systems and philosophical change" as public schools compete for students, said Rusty Stitt, superintendent of Schoolcraft Community Schools.

For Schoolcraft, the Schools of Choice law has been "extremely beneficial," Stitt said. This past school year, the district had a net gain of 109 full-time-equivalent students by enrolling children from outside the district.

Those students generated almost $800,000 in revenue, 8.4 percent of the district's operating budget. "It's helped us maintain our programs and our financial stability," Stitt said.

But even as a leader of a district that has benefited from the law, "I struggle with it," Stitt said.

A real public-policy concern, he said, is that middle-class parents with the means to transport their children will opt for high-achieving districts, further isolating children of poverty.

"The question is: Do we get into sort and select?" Stitt said. "Will it increase the gap" between the haves and the have-nots?

Jon Tone, who lived in Marcellus
and sent his children to Schoolcraft schools for the past two
years, said he understands the concerns. But he also is a strong supporter of the Schools of Choice law.

"I know that some small country schools are losing students because of
this, and I feel bad about that," Tone said.

But, he added, "I think this law is one of the fairest
things going. We're not stuck in a certain district. If you want to
better yourself, why not have that opportunity?"

The data did not include private- or home-school students and the analysis subtracted out students enrolled in schools run by intermediate school districts, such as those for special-education students.

Among highlights from the analysis:

Of 86,120 public-school students in the region, about 1,200 -- or about 1.4 percent -- were enrolled in charter schools and almost all of that was in Kalamazoo County, where about 3 percent of students attend charters. One reason for the lower numbers elsewhere: There are few charter schools located in or near the other five intermediate school districts.

Another 8,260 full-time-equivalent students -- about 9.6 percent of the region's public school population -- attended a public school as an out-of-district resident.

The five districts with the greatest net gains through out-of-district enrollment are Centreville, Edwardsburg, Parchment, Mendon and Constantine. One reason that Centreville tops the list: It benefits from enrolling high school students from Nottawa, which operates only a K-8 school.

The five districts in the region with the biggest net loss of students: White Pigeon, Colon, Martin, Covert and Bloomingdale.

The movement of students is particularly high in rural counties. In school districts based in St. Joseph and Barry counties, one of every seven students is enrolled in a public school outside their home district.

The single biggest shift from a proportional standpoint: 193 students who live in White Pigeon are enrolled in Constantine Community Schools. If those students stayed in White Pigeon, the district's enrollment would increase by 25 percent.

The Promise scholarship program, which was unveiled in November 2005, covers 100 percent of four years of college tuition at a Michigan public university for children who attend KPS from kindergarten through high school graduation. Students who attend KPS only for high school get a tuition subsidy of 60 percent.

Gary Start, deputy superintendent of KPS, said it's a common phenomenon for families in urban districts to seek educational alternatives, and Kalamazoo actually fares better than its urban peers.

In fact, the Grand Rapids, Lansing and Battle Creek school districts each lost at least a third of their public-school population to charters or other districts in 2011-12, compared to about 10 percent in KPS, state data shows.

"It's always going to be the case" that some families who live in KPS seek other options, Start said. "But there's less of that going on than before" The Promise.

He and other KPS officials also note The Promise specifically requires recipients to live in the school district, so families who choose KPS are highly motivated to live in the district versus enrolling their child as an out-of-district student, Start said.

For that reason, looking at just out-of-district enrollment trends "doesn't reflect the full extent of what's happening" between KPS and other districts, Start said. While other districts may be gaining out-of-district students, Kalamazoo's growth comes from its in-district population.

"The bottom line is that we're growing faster than anybody else," Start said.

"Our market share has improved immensely" under The Promise, Start
added. "To reject KPS, you have to reject $40,000 in tuition benefits."

Shifts in Kalamazoo County

In part to protect Kalamazoo Public Schools, the nine school districts in Kalamazoo County initially had a firm pact in regards to the Schools of Choice law: They would essentially ignore it.

For more than 10 years, the nine districts would enroll out-of-district students only if the home district signed a written release.

"The overriding impetus (of the pact) was to protect the countywide collaboration projects," said Ron Fuller, superintendent of the Kalamazoo Regional Educational Service Agency. "It's hard to collaborate when you're competing."

Another motivation, he said, was "to protect the urban school district."

In the past few years, The Promise has helped to level the playing field, and other districts began to feel pressure from schools outside the county who were recruiting their students.

As a result, the pact has frayed in recent years, and there are now three districts — Parchment, Gull Lake and Galesburg-Augusta — that no longer require a release and actively recruit out-of-district students.

In 2008-09, Parchment enrolled 38 full-time-equivalant students who lived outside the district. That number jumped to 345 in 2011-12, when out-of-district students comprised 20 percent of Parchment's enrollment.

On the flip side, there were 132 full-time-equivalent students who lived in Parchment in 2011-12 but attended either a charter school or a school in another district. Still, the district ended up with a net enrollment increase of about 12 percent.

Parchment Superintendent Matt Miller said that 42 of the district's new families participated in a survey last fall on why they switched to Parchment.

"The No. 1 reason was that they heard good things about Parchment," he said.

No. 2 was a perception that the quality of education in Parchment exceeded the standards in their former district, and No. 3 was a desire for a smaller school district.

"It's my personal belief that you can get a great education in any school in the county, so some it comes down to personal preference," Miller said.

In that regard, Miller said he fully supports the Schools of Choice law.

"I've always had the philosophy that you shouldn't tell families where they have to go to school," he said. "We think it's the right thing for families" to give them choice.

But he acknowledged that the law has threatened the survival of some districts, including small, rural districts that are losing enrollment to larger districts with more programs and better facilities. Last month, Galien Township Schools in Berrien County closed its doors and officials there cited enrollment losses as a result of the Schools of Choice law as the primary reason.

"That's the downside," Miller said. "You don't go into public education to be competitors. That environment was created for us by the Legislature, and you do the best you can given the environment we have."'A fantastic law'

When Tone's two sons reached middle-school age, he and his wife began thinking harder about their school options.

The family lived in Marcellus and the boys went through Marcellus Elementary School.

But for middle and high school, the Tones thought Schoolcraft would be a better fit.

"There were several reasons," Jon Tone said. "I'm very sports oriented and Schoolcraft has a really good sports program.

Josh Mauser / KalamazooMorgan DeYoung, 6, reads a story to her mother Tiffany DeYoung. Morgan is attending Parchment Central Elementary School, which is not her home school. The DeYoung family has a lot of ties to Parchment and is glad they get to choose Morgan's school. "It is a fantastic law," Tiffany DeYoung said. "We can send her to the school we wanted to, not the school we had to."

"Also, the academics at Schoolcraft rated very high in our minds," he said, adding that he and his wife were particularly impressed with Schoolcraft's efforts to prepare students for college.

"College-readiness was probably the biggest thing," he said.

The Tones, who also have a 6-year-old daughter, used the Schools of Choice law to enroll their children in Schoolcraft schools in fall 2010. They've enjoyed the community so much that they put their Marcellus house on the market and recently moved into a home in Schoolcraft.

"It was a tough decision" to leave Marcellus schools and then move out of the school district, Jon Tone said. "But in the end, it was the right decision."

Tiffany DeYoung used the Schools of Choice law last fall when she was in the midst of a divorce and her only child was about to enter kindergarten.

DeYoung lived in the Comstock school district, but she was hoping to move to Parchment. She went through Parchment schools herself and had an aunt who is the school secretary at Parchment's Central Elementary School.

"My ex-husband and I felt much more comfortable sending her to a school where somebody was there to watch over her," DeYoung said, who ended up sending her daughter to Central Elementary. "It's worked out very well."

Two months ago, DeYoung and her daughter moved to an apartment in Parchment.

"It's a fantastic state law," DeYoung said of Schools of Choice. "I'm very happy it's there. This way, we could send her to the school we wanted to send her, instead of the school where we had to send her."